True Worship

"Within your temple, O God, we meditate on your unfailing love." (Psalm 48:9 NIV).

Certainly our worship of God is not limited to a place. Indeed, a person who is not consistently walking with God throughout the week cannot effectively worship God on the weekend! Like the people of Isaiah’s day, there are many people who "claim to worship me, but their words are meaningless, and their hearts are somewhere else. Their religion is nothing but human rules and traditions, which they have simply memorized." (Isaiah 29:13 TEV). When all is said and done, it is not the externals of worship that matter but the internals.

However, having said that, we must not forget, as some are in the sinful habit of doing, that corporate worship is no mere option for God’s redeemed people. (See Hebrews 10:25).

When God called the children of Israel out of Egypt and brought them to Mount Sinai, besides giving them the Law, He gave them instructions for the tabernacle so that they could have corporate worship. He didn’t say, "Now all of you go out into the wilderness alone and meditate on Me." No! He said, "Here’s my place, here’s how it is to be built, and here’s what I want you to do: Come here and meet with me."

In a society where a primum is placed on self-sufficiency, it is hard for us to understand the importance of the assembled body of believers. In a society where television preachers can be tuned into with the simple push of a button, many substitute the electronic church for the true church. (And yes, I did mean to put it that way!)

Think of it this way. Suppose you got up out of bed one morning, and, wiping the sleep from your eyes, you looked down and your right hand decided to stay in bed that day. After all, it has worked hard all week, not only at work but around home as well. So, during the night it simply decided to separate itself from the rest of the body and lay in that day. I doubt very much whether you would take in such a picture calmly. I doubt very much that you would think it normal. I doubt very much you would be willing to go about your daily activities with a dismissing, "Well, it’s part of my body most of the time. It deserves some time away."

Yet, week after week, members of Christ’s body do exactly that. It is not normal, and those of us who dismiss it as normal simply show how subnormal we’ve become in relation to the assembled body of believers. Christ said, "I will built my church," not, "I will build lone ranger Christians."
If you are excusing your lack of commitment to a local body, you are cheating yourself, you are cheating the body of Christ, and frankly you are being disobedient to Christ. Argue however you like, the truth of the matter is, you have a greater chance of experiencing the thrill of a baseball game if you are at the stadium. Similarly you have a better chance of experiencing the thrill of true worship if you are among other worshipers!